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From Rights to Reconciliation

Acts 10:9-34
February 14, 1971
John M. Buchanan

The second Sunday in February has always been designated Race Relations
Sunday. ind the way the churches observe this particular day is a reliable
reflector of the climate between the races, both inside and outside the church.
Two decades ago Race Rélations Sunday could be observed in the more daring
congregations by means of a pulpit exchange. Nobody expected that the exercise
would have mach impact on the actual relations between races, but it did serve
to make everyone feel good. One decade ago Rece Relations Sunday was observed
in the midst of all the heat and controversy generated by the Civil Rights
Movement. Lunch counter sit-ins, bus boycotts, fire hoses, cattle prods,
mass demonstrations were in the papers everyday. The Church, ten years ago,
was beginning to gear up and plunge into the foray. Ministers were travelling
to Selma and Hattiesburg and getting arrested. Other ministers prayed for
them, cheered heen on from northern pulpits and got fired - which was in
Many ways worse than getting arrested. |

Now it's 1971, and it is both tempting and very easy today to breeze
right by Race Relations Sunday without so much as a word =~ for a number of
reasons. First - some of the initial skirmishes have been won. Lawa have
been changed. In the areas of Sfoting, housing, employment and education,
the legal situation today is vastly different than it was ten yeaTs agoe
Tremendous strides have been taken - and it's very easy to feel that the
battle is over. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. But,
I think the real reason we are inclined to ignore Race Relations Sunday is :
that the situation is so totally different today - on both sides -— and we're
not all sure what it is we ought to be saying and doing. In a sense, it is
more painful than ever to observe this day in 1971.

It is painful today - if I may pontificate for a moment — bacause the

time has come to move from rights to reconciliation. It is one thing to

support voter registration in Georgia. It is another thing altogether to think
about reconciliation between my neighbor and myself. Reconciliation requires
that conflict be expressed, and it is simply easier to look the other way: to
avoid the expression of conflict: and to ignore Race Relations Sunday.

Well, let's not 4 that again this year. Let's take another look. Let's
begin by examining an important anecdote in the Book of Korwt and by attempting
to put the whole issue within the context of the Christian Faith. There are
many Biblical references which spell out our responsibility to and for our
fellow man. From the prophet Amos: "Let justice roll down like water, and
righteousness like an everflowing stream.’ And Micah: "What does the Lord
require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly
with your God." In the New Testament Jesus taught the love and acceptance of
all men. The parable of the Good Samaritan, for instance, illustrates the
divine demand for love across racial, national, religious and culture lines.
And the First Epistle of John sums it all up with surgical precision:

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God..... If anyone says,
‘I love God", and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love
his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen."

I find the Scriptures pretty clear regarding my feelings, my vesponeibilsty
and my behavior in relation to other men. But of all the textual material that
might be appropriate on this day, none is quite as practical and personal as the
strange story of Peter and Cornelius. It's a rather complex tale, so let me
summarize.

Cornelius was a Roman military officer, from Italy, a Gentile, but a God—
fearing man who was friendly to the Jews. That is, he believed in one God,
and worshipped with the people and helped support the Synagog. But he was a
gentile. Cornelius was moved to invite Peter to his home.

Peter, disciple of Jesus Christ, good Jew who lived by the law and who
saw his new faith within the framework of Judaiam was in the area, Peter ~

for whom association with Cornelius would have been unthinkable ~ had a

strange dream. In the dream he was commanded to kill and eat certain animals

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which the religious law categorized as unclean. When he protested he heard a
voice saying: “It is not for you to call profane what God counts clean."
The dream ended: Cornelius's messangers arrived inviting Peter to their masters
home. And as they met, both moved by the Spirit of God, the pieces all fell into
place for Peter. "I now see," he said, "how true it is that God has no favorites."
The translation really is not adequate: the sense of the statement is: “How
I am catching on to what it really means." Peter knew, theoretically, that God
was the father of all men. He knew, intellectually, that all men are equal in
God's sight. But in the confrontation with the Gentile Cornelius that old
concept suddenly became very practical, God was requiring of Peter that he
violate an honored social custom, do something probably very distasteful to him,
and that he change both his behavior and attitude toward a group of people he
heretofore had considered unclean, inferior and undesirable.

I would suggest to you that the same God who moyed Peter - who demanded
that Peter change — who instigated a radical change in social custom ~ is very
much behind the ferment on the racial scene today. I believe that God is moving
men to change today. I believe that God, in his infinite wisdom, has chosen
this particular time in history to correct an historical wrong. I believe
that God, in his infinite wisdom, has chosen to’ do it by disturbing the calm
waters of his church.

I believe God is shaking the traditional structures because the sad truth
is that his church has not always been very consistant between what is says it
believes ~ what it kmows to be true, and what it actually does. In fact, the
Church of Jesus Christ has a notoriously poor record in the past in Race
Relations. But there is no sense belaboring that point. We know it's true.

In the words of one perceptive observer: “It is possible that future historians
‘may declare the irony of ironies - that in the middle of the 20th century, fight
promoters and baseball managers did more for emancipating the Negroe than did

the churchmen." [From T. B. Maston, The Bible and Race, p. 41]

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Now let me pause at this point to share with you one of the very real a
agonies of the ministry. I love the church: I love the Presbyterian Church:

I love this congregation. ind no one has to remind me that people get angry
and quit the church when preachers start talking about race, No one has to
tell me - in fact I am accutely aware of the fact ~ that most people don't come
to church to hear about race relations. No one has to tell me that within

this congregation - or any congregation on Sunday Morning - there are people
who need the comfort of the Good News: who need the assurance of God's unfail-
ing and eternal love; who need the support of a caring fellowship. I know that
very well. The pain of the ministry is knowing that and wanting every week

to be able to speak to it. The pain of the minkstry is knowing and loving the
people in it, and at the same time sensing deep inside, where one lives, that
God is demanding that we change, that we be honest with him and ourselves, that
we take very seriously the demands he places upon us as his children. The pain
of honest churchmanship ~ clergy and laity — is in loving the church, yet
knowing that love for God and his will is far more important.

In any case, the Church's record is not good. I believe God is judging
and disturbing us at this point - and it is all happening in the midst of a
radically different situation.

The Civil Rights movement of the early sixties was full of idealism and
romanticism. If enough people got on the bandwagon: if enough people partici-
pated in pilgrimmages to the South: if enough letters were written to oongress—
men, Freedom Now would become an instant reality. More than any other man,

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was responsible for that. It was carefully non-
violent, very moderate by today's standards, and oriented around the Christian
Church, The high point came in 1963, at one of the largest gatherings
Washington, D.C, has ever seen. And King's dream of a society in which all men
would be brothers seemed almost within reach, I have portions of that speech

on tape ~ and to hear it today is to weep at the hope which has now turned to

bitterness.

On the heels of 1963 came the assasinations, and something called backlash,
and when all the smoke had cleared it became abundantly clear that while the
law of the land had changed, the black man's plight looked very much the same.
Hope turned to frustration: "We shall overcome” gave way to “Burn,Baby, Burn".
Integration was replaced by Black Power: and in the newspapers people seldom
saw reference to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Instead it was
Malcolm X, Black Muslims and an organization that struck fear in the hearts of
the whole nation - namely the Black Panthers.

The turning point came in the Spring of 1969. Listen to the words of Dr.
Gayrand 8. Wilmore, chairman of our own division of Church and Race.

"Qn Sunday, May 4, (1969) James Forman walked down the aisle of Riverside’
Church in New York City and hurled a series of demands at its minister and
people. That dramatic confrontation with one of the historic symbols of-white,
middle class Protestantism precipitated perhaps the most serious crisis in the
American religious establishment since the bitter polemics and antagonisms
that divided it just prior to the Civil War." [ The Church's Response to the
Black Manifesto ]

The liberals were stunned. The people who supported Civil Rights felt
betrayed. The bigots rejoiced. ind the people on the fence ~ scurried to aot
off and to join the swing to reaction and fatigue and apathy. :

The whole Black Power movement did several things. It alienated a lot
of whites. It identified integration and discrimination as white problems -
not black. I+ called us racists and we didn't like that at all. But, most of
all it freed the Black man from the anxiety of trying to squeeze into a system
that didn't really want him - freed him to discover who he was, where he'd
been, to reclaim the identity which had been meticulously stripped away by
slavery and segragation, and to enjoy being black instead of trying to be white.

In the process, Black Americans, and hopefully white Jmericans learned

mis.

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a surprising thing - there's nothing wrong with blackness. ‘Ye learned, for
instance, that the second book published by an American woman was a volume of
poetry by Phylis Wheatly, a black woman who was brought here on a slave ship in
1761. le learned that Benjamin Banneker, a black man, distinguished himself
in the 18th century as an astronomer, almanac-maker, surveyor, botanist, zoologist
and philosopher, That this same man — whose name never made it into any history
books, made important discoveries in the velocity of sound waves, wrote ane of
the first scholarly dissertations on bees, and helped to lay out the city of
Washington, D.C.

We've learned that black scientists and inventors own more than 5,000
patents ranging from machine guns to devices for utilizing atomic onergy:
that a black man invented a telephone transmittor bought by Bell Telephone.
We've learned that Dr. Percy Julian created the drug used to treat Glaucoma
and that Dr. Charles Drew perfected the blood plasma technique that saved so
many lives in Slorld War II. We've learned that the first successful operation
on the human heart was performed by a black Dr. Daniel Hale Williams -— and that
= Bleck scientist made the key contribution to the computer inside X-15,
Americats first racket ship.

We're learning that the black contribution to {America has been immense:
that somehow, this people we chained and brought here as slaves, this people we
treated as property, this people we attacked at their most vulnerable point -—
marriage and the family —- have survived and contributed mightly and signifi-
cantly to our common culture.

there do we go from here? I think we are going to be asked to stand aside
sometimes and to let the black man find his own way. I think we're probably
done with white solutions and that more and more we will have to allow the
black man to make his own decisions and his own mistakes. I think we are going
to have to stop paternalizing black people. I think we're going to have to
admit that we live in a system that is racist: that white America is terribly

responsible for the black ghetto - and that we have no right to demand white—

middle olass behavior from people whose tvery energy has been sapped\in the
effort simply to survive. I think we're going to have to stop smarting when the
people we called niggers call us EARS Institutionally, I think we're going
to have to turn things around. And if you want an immediate illustration try

a commnity that is seriously contemplating a public golf course on the banks
of the Wabash, but that, can't afford to patch the sieht where black people
live - or to provide community centers and social services other than those two
modieval hovels and the understaffed, under paid mockery now in existence in
Lafayette, Indiana.

But most of all, we've got a lot of attitudes to change, beginning with
our ow. ind why? First, for the sake of our nation. Consider this little
vignette from ~ paper I read recently [/. Certain Dark Joy]

fen years from now or twenty years from now when blacks comprise from
one-third to more than one-half of our major cities, a-bill is coming due.
Sooner or later,, the commonwealth is going to have to decide between the imerican
idea or Fascism.’ For the sake of the nation! Thomas Jefferson once said,
uI tremble for my country when I eetent that God is just. We're in the middle
of a revolution and where it all ends depends on the attitudes of millions of
white, middle class people like you and me. What's at stake? Ideas like life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness: ideas like ‘one nation uder God with
liberty and justice for all." Why change? Wor the sake of the nation: but
deeper than that, far more important than that -— because you and I stand under
a oross: a cross that means one God who created all, loves all enough to die
for all; a cross the shadow of which makes all men brothers who would stand
beneath it.

dn apocryphal story is told about the occasion when Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court Charles Evans Iiughes walked down the aisle in a large Washington
church to become a member. He was joined before the altar by a pipe fitter and
a Chinese laundryman. The minister, looking at the three of them, is said to

have remarked, “Isn't it amazing how level the ground is at the foot of the

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cross?"

Why change? Because Jesus Christ died for you and your brother; and because
he has made you responsible to and for your brother regardless of the color of
his skin.

Friday was the anniversary of the birth of Lbraham Lincoln. I would conclude
with words of his which are, I believe, among the most timeless ever uttered,

He spoke them to the Congross of the United States on December 1, 1862. They
bear repeating - for they speak eloquently to you and me now.

"The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The
occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.
4s our Case is new, sO we must think anew, and act anew....+e.. In giving free-
dom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free...... Fellow citizens wo cannot
escape history. ile will be remembered in spite of ourselves..... We - even we
here ~ hold‘ the power and beer the responsibility ..... The way is plain,
peaceful, generous, just - a way which, if followed, the world will ever applaud,
and God mst forever bless."

amen.

Our father, God, we confess that it is not easy to change. Forgive us
when we fail, Continue to disturb us with your spirit so that each of us may
rise to this new occasion, For we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, who died

for all men, our Lord.

amen